+ AUTOETTES
Autoettes of Long Beach:
electric cars before they were cool
I
f you spent any time walking the
mean streets of Downtown Long
Beach before 1971 or so, and you’re
still alive against all odds, you can
consider yourself a survivor of the
Autoette menace that terrorized local
pedestrians throughout the Viet-
nam-Cold War-era.
F
or our purposes, Autoette is a trade
name for the little electric shop-
ping car created by electrical engineer
Robert Tafel in Long Beach shortly
after he moved to Long Beach in
1936, but now it’s a generic term for
the little three-wheel, stick-steering
carts that were manufactured under
several names, including Mobilette,
Marketeer, Marketour, and the Elec-
tric Shopper.
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T
here were electric cars in existence in Long Beach at
the time Tafel arrived in Long Beach. They were called
Custer cars, for their inventor, L. Luzern Custer, and to call
them cars is to engage in hyperbole. They were basically
electric-powered wheelchairs (the term “electric chairs” was
probably not much considered) and were chiefly used by
polio survivors and infirm veterans of World War I to get
around town. The cost was about $300 (more than $5,000 in
2018 dollars), which was nearly prohibitive. Tafel reckoned
he could make it cheaper, and he did. Soon the little cars
were zipping all over town.